Macedonian Ambassador to Japan Andrijana Cvetkovik’s take on the Hijiribashi Bridge over the Kanda River in Tokyo won her the Grand Prize in the 19th Japan Through Diplomats’ Eyes photography contest this week. The annual competition was set up to let diplomats and their ...

A lawyer says that five Western diplomats trying to visit her after she was prevented from traveling to the United States to accept an award for her rights work have been stopped by police. Ni Yulan was awarded the State Department’s International Women of ...

Police on Friday referred to prosecutors the case of a suspected leak of restricted information in 2013 by a former Ground Self-Defense Force commander to a Russian intelligence officer formerly posted in Tokyo as a military attache. Papers on five former and incumbent Self-Defense ...

For many Southeast Asian countries, Japanese developmental aid may be synonymous with building bridges, roads and public facilities. But besides its infrastructure-building capacity, Japan is also boosting one of the strategic tools of diplomacy at its disposal: human resource development. Even as fellow East ...

The government needs to establish a training facility to nurture the skills of Japanese who want to work for the United Nations, according to Hitoki Den, a former senior political affairs officer with the global body. “Japan is the second-largest contributor to the U.N. ...

Former Japanese Ambassador to the United States Takakazu Kuriyama, who was involved in bilateral talks for the 1972 reversion of Okinawa Prefecture, died of pneumonia at a hospital in Tokyo on Wednesday, his family said Thursday. He was 83. A native of Tokyo, Kuriyama ...

The Swedish security service SAPO accused Russia on Wednesday of using as many as one-third of its diplomatic staff in the Scandinavian country for clandestine intelligence gathering. Offering an unusual glimpse into the hush-hush world of counterespionage, SAPO chief analyst Wilhelm Unge described the ...

Turkey has closed its embassy in Yemen, the Foreign Ministry in Ankara said on Monday, the latest of a number of foreign powers to withdraw their diplomats as the country’s civil conflict worsens. The ambassador and other embassy staff had returned to Turkey, a ...

Senior Japanese and Russian diplomats will meet in Tokyo in early December to agree a schedule for a postponed meeting of vice foreign ministers, informed sources said Tuesday. Expected participants are Hajime Hayashi, director general of the Foreign Ministry’s European Affairs Bureau, and Andrei ...

Russian and Polish officials confirmed Monday that they have carried out tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsions in an espionage affair that highlights intensified efforts by Moscow to penetrate NATO counties and a new determination by the West to fight back. As tensions grow over Russia’s military ...

Top diplomats from the West and Russia trying to find an end to the crisis in Ukraine are gathering in Paris on Wednesday as tensions simmered over the Russian military takeover of the strategic Crimean Peninsula. A team of international observers headed to Crimea, ...

Ciaran Chestnutt, first secretary of the Australian Embassy, on Thursday won the Prince Takamado Memorial Prize while Mayssa Hamada from the Egyptian Embassy received the Grand Prize in this year’s photo contest featuring the works of diplomats posted in Japan. Celebrating its 16th anniversary ...